As you look at these sites, act like you are the customer and you have no ties to either one. You go looking to buy Widget X online and you find this website listed first:

Exhibit A

How user friendly is this site?  In other words, how easy is it for a customer to look at this website and know exactly what they are supposed to do in a few seconds time?

Now, you return to the search results and you find this website:

Exhibit B

What you see above is a clean, orderly interface. You know exactly what they sell, and they make it easy to buy. The design is excellent, and the checkout process is simple.  I actually went through the process of buying a shirt on this site, and I was done after a few easy steps.

Why you should care

Sometimes website owners get so used to their website that it becomes hard to see past the usability flaws. Before they know it, the site starts looking like Exhibit A when it should look as good as Exhibit B. Hopefully you don’t have a site like the first one up above, but I’m willing to bet yours could still use some improvement. Here are a few areas where your site might be suffering and what you can do about it.

Too much text distracts from the call to action

Don’t get caught in the trap of cramming too much text onto your homepage. Unfortunately, if you try to give readers all the information at once, you risk boring or confusing them. That leads to high bounce rates and less conversions. Bounce rate refers to how many site visitors leave your site from the same page they came from, without exploring any other pages. Obviously, you want to keep your bounce rate as low as possible.

How to do it right

All you need on the homepage is what leads a customer to buy now. If you want them to buy a t-shirt, put up a big picture of a t-shirt. Put the price right underneath it. Then either make it clickable, or put a big bold button to the right of it that says something like “buy now”. If you don’t sell t-shirts, apply this advice to your product. Simplicity will work anywhere.

Make your content to the point

When you have to include text on the homepage, it must be clear and to the point. Consider the what, why, when, where, and how, and answer it as concisely as possible. Test out your site content by getting somebody else to read it. If they get it the first time, and it’s perfectly clear (avoid industry jargon), you’ve got something to go with. Also, don’t forget the navigational text should be simple, too. Avoid having a top menu, left sidebar menu, right sidebar menu, mini menu, bottom menu, etc. Just put it up top or on the left side and be done with it.

Color and size matter

Pick the area on the page where you want to direct the most eyeballs and make it stand out. If it is a “Sign Up” or “Buy Now” button, color it in stark contrast to the background so it’s easy to see. Make your main call to action button larger than your intuition tells you, and put it in a prominent and clean area of the homepage. You have unlimited options, but the concept of bold and obvious remains.

You might need a redesign

Most of you would agree that the red and blue thing at the top of this post needs a website redesign. The hard part is acknowledging that your site needs one too. Moving buttons around, changing colors, and cutting out text is enough for a lot of websites, but some are too far gone. If you’re there, start from scratch with a designer you trust. Just make sure that your designer knows how to design a site that converts into sales.

Conversion is an essential part of search engine marketing because it deals with what happens after the customer has clicked on your search engine listing. Make sure you are balancing your resources between search results and conversion, because nobody will purchase your amazing product if they can’t find it on your site.

*Exhibit B is the totally rad Ugmonk.com. Buy one of their shirts.

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Build Engaging User Communities

Effective, efficient collaboration is at the heart of today’s most successful companies. SocialBiz by IntelliTek provides small and mid-market companies with a platform to build engaging user communities for internal collaboration, customer support, sales, marketing, and public relations.

Complete the form below to access this White Paper from IntelliTek Systems:

TinyEditor is a simple JavaScript WYSIWYG editor that is both lightweight (8KB) and standalone. It can easily be customized to integrate with any website through CSS and the multitude of parameters. It handles most of the basic formatting needs and has some functionality built in to help keep the rendered markup as clean as possible. The icons are courtesy of famfamfam and have been combined into a sprite so there are only a few HTTP requests for the editor. I plan on adding some updates in the future to support font color, a full-screen mode, and a paste from Word option.

To initialize the script use the following:

new TINY.editor.edit('editor',{
	id:'input', // (required) ID of the textarea
	width:584, // (optional) width of the editor
	height:175, // (optional) heightof the editor
	cssclass:'te', // (optional) CSS class of the editor
	controlclass:'tecontrol', // (optional) CSS class of the buttons
	rowclass:'teheader', // (optional) CSS class of the button rows
	dividerclass:'tedivider', // (optional) CSS class of the button diviers
	controls:['bold', 'italic', 'underline', 'strikethrough', '|', 'subscript', 'superscript', '|', 'orderedlist', 'unorderedlist', '|' ,'outdent' ,'indent', '|', 'leftalign', 'centeralign', 'rightalign', 'blockjustify', '|', 'unformat', '|', 'undo', 'redo', 'n', 'font', 'size', 'style', '|', 'image', 'hr', 'link', 'unlink', '|', 'cut', 'copy', 'paste', 'print'], // (required) options you want available, a '|' represents a divider and an 'n' represents a new row
	footer:true, // (optional) show the footer
	fonts:['Verdana','Arial','Georgia','Trebuchet MS'],  // (optional) array of fonts to display
	xhtml:true, // (optional) generate XHTML vs HTML
	cssfile:'style.css', // (optional) attach an external CSS file to the editor
	content:'starting content', // (optional) set the starting content else it will default to the textarea content
	css:'body{background-color:#ccc}', // (optional) attach CSS to the editor
	bodyid:'editor', // (optional) attach an ID to the editor body
	footerclass:'tefooter', // (optional) CSS class of the footer
	toggle:{text:'source',activetext:'wysiwyg',cssclass:'toggle'}, // (optional) toggle to markup view options
	resize:{cssclass:'resize'} // (optional) display options for the editor resize
});

The first parameter taken by TINY.editor.edit is the variable name used for the object instance. Keep in mind that before posting you will need to call the instance.post() function to ensure that the latest changes in the WYSIWYG translate into the text area. This script has been tested in all major browsers and is available free of charge for both personal or commercial projects under the creative commons license. Community support is available here. Paid support is also available, contact me for details.

Click here for the demo.

Click here to download the source code.

1/8/2010 – Resolved a couple IE and Chrome issues and added some cleanup for Safari/Chrome. Thanks for the reports.

1/12/2010 – Resolved issue with conversion to lower case and the header row class.

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CodeMirror is a real-time code editor for your browser. I know that diff isn’t a format edited by humans, but I found myself needing the diff syntax highlight where other code is shown.
More on that soon.

Live Example, Download the parser.

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Required Skills:

• At least one year of development experience using PHP
• Ability to write hand-coded, cross-browser compatible, standards compliant XHTML and CSS
• Experience with XML, Javascript, and AJAX
• Ability to become proficient in new languages quickly
• Strong communication skills

Pluses:

• Experience with ASP.Net
• User interface and graphics skills
• Understanding of SEO principles
• SQL and database design experience
• Basic understanding of Apache

Send a resume and any applicable portfolio links to contact@refinacorp.com. No development firms. Qualified individuals will be contacted. Candidates local to North Alabama are preferred.

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Happy new years to everyone! I wanted to announce that as of yesterday I am working independently again, focusing my efforts on building my web development company, Refina. This change also means I will finally have time to be more active in the development community and work on some of my start-up concepts. I will be releasing new scripts starting shortly and begin writing more about web development in general. I will also likely be re-branding leigeber.com to something more generic and am looking for guest authors so please contact me if you are interested.

I am actively seeking web design and application development projects both small and large. Let me know if I can ever be of assistance or if you know anyone who I should talk to. Hope you all have great 2010!

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This super lightweight (1.5KB) and standalone sliding slideshow script can easily be customized to integrate with any website through CSS. You can add any content to it, not just images, and it gracefully degrades without JavaScript support. The script supports automatic rotation with the option to auto-resume, an active class on a navigation list if applicable, and a direction toggle (vertical or horizontal).

To initialize the script use the following:

var slideshow=new TINY.slider.slide('slideshow',{
	id:'slider', // ID of the parent slideshow div
	auto:3, // Seconds to auto-advance, defaults to disabled
	resume:true, // Resume auto after interrupted, defaults to false
	vertical:false, // Direction, defaults to false
	navid:'pagination', // Optional ID of direct navigation UL
	activeclass:'current', // Class to set on the current LI
	position:0 // Initial slide position, defaulting to index 0
});

The first parameter taken by TINY.slider.slide is the variable name used for the object instance. You can also optionally set width and height parameters for the applicable direction you are sliding. If it is not set the width or height will be automatically calculated using the offsetWidth/offsetHeight of the first list element. This script has been tested in all major browsers and is available free of charge for both personal or commercial projects under the creative commons license. Community support is available here. Paid support is also available, contact me for details.

Click here for the demo.

Click here to download the source code.

12/8/2009 – Fixed bug that threw slider into loop outside of constraints.

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While PHP offers some basic functions to handle paths, such as basename and dirname to resolute the (direct) parent and base name of a path, it does not offer any means of normalizing or combining a path if it’s on a remote file system that is not in the server’s reach. If the files are local, it offers the function realpath.

I didn’t like the case and decided to write a ’static’ utility class to handle file paths safely, without worrying about possible path masquerading from broken code.

I hope someone will find the result useful:

<?php
 
/**
 * @class Path
 *
 * @brief Utility class that handles file and directory pathes
 *
 * This class handles basic important operations done to file system paths.
 * It safely renders relative pathes and removes all ambiguity from a relative path.
 *
 * @author Liran Nuna
 */
final class Path
{
	/**
	 * Returns the parent path of this path.
	 * "/path/to/directory" will return "/path/to"
	 *
	 * @arg $path	The path to retrieve the parent path from
	 */
	public static function dirname($path) {
		return dirname(self::normalize($path));
	}
 
	/**
	 * Returns the last item on the path.
	 * "/path/to/directory" will return "directory"
	 *
	 * @arg $path	The path to retrieve the base from
	 */
	public static function basename($path) {
		return basename(self::normalize($path));
	}
 
	/**
	 * Normalizes the path for safe usage
	 * This function does several operations to the given path:
	 *   * Removes unnecessary slashes (///path//to/////directory////)
	 *   * Removes current directory references (/path/././to/./directory/./././)
	 *   * Renders relative pathes (/path/from/../to/somewhere/in/../../directory)
	 *
	 * @arg $path	The path to normalize
	 */
	public static function normalize($path) {
		return array_reduce(explode('/', $path), create_function('$a, $b', '
			if($a === 0)
				$a = "/";
 
			if($b === "" || $b === ".")
				return $a;
 
			if($b === "..")
				return dirname($a);
 
			return preg_replace("/\/+/", "/", "$a/$b");
		'), 0);
	}
 
	/**
	 * Combines a list of pathes to one safe path
	 *
	 * @arg $root	The path or array with values to combine into a single path
	 * @arg ...		Relative pathes to root or arrays
	 *
	 * @note		This function works with multi-dimentional arrays recursively.
	 */
	public static function combine($root, $rel1) {
		$arguments = func_get_args();
		return self::normalize(array_reduce($arguments, create_function('$a,$b', '
			if(is_array($a))
				$a = array_reduce($a, "Path::combine");
			if(is_array($b))
				$b = array_reduce($b, "Path::combine");
 
			return "$a/$b";
		')));
	}
 
	/**
	 * Empty, private constructor, to prevent instantiation
	 */
	private function __construct() {
		// Prevents instantiation
	}
}

Usage of this class is very simple, Path::basename and Path::dirname perform the same operation as PHP’s native dirname and basename, but safer:

<?php
// PHP's native basname will return '..'
echo basename('/path/to/treasure/island/monster/../..') . "\n";
// Safe basename will return 'treasure'
echo Path::basename('/path/to/treasure/island/monster/../..') . "\n";
 
// PHP's native dirname will return '/path/to/treasure/island/monster/..'
echo dirname('/path/to/treasure/island/monster/../..') . "\n";
// Safe dirname will return '/path/to'
echo Path::dirname('/path/to/treasure/island/monster/../..') . "\n";

Path::normalize will sanitize paths and return the safe real path even if it does not exist on the server:

<?php
// Normalize will 'sanitize' this path
// Result: '/path/to/candy/up/ahead/please/go/right'
echo Path::normalize(
	'///../path//to/./monster/././/' .
	'//../candy/.//./up/ahead/.//./' .
	'test//back/../..//please/go///' .
	'/left/./../right/123_test!/../'
) . "\n";

Lastly, Path::combine will combine paths from variable amount of strings and arrays to form one safe path:

<?php
// Combine paths from a relative path and root
// Result: '/var/www/www.site.com/index.html'
echo Path::combine(
	'/var/www/www.site.com/',
	'img/../css/jqueryui/../../index.html'
) . "\n";
 
// Combine will also take values from arrays
// Result: '/path/to/directory/sub/TEST/test/lastDirectory/filename.ext'
echo Path::combine(
	array(
		"/path/to",
		"folder/../directory"
	), 'sub',
	array(
		array(
			array(
				'TEST',
				'test',
			)
		),
		'lastDirectory',
	),
	'filename.ext'
) . "\n";

As always, code I post is under the WTFPL, so you can use it without any obligations.

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The third iteration of the TinyTable table sorting script adds search, column averages and totals, record numbering, a view all function, and a reset function. At only 6KB it is still lightweight, quick, and includes all previous TinyTable features. Other features include alternate row highlighting, header class toggling, auto data type recognition, and selective column sorting. If you don’t need the new features take a look at the second version of the script which weighs 2.5KB.

To initialize a table sorter follow the pattern below:

var sorter = new TINY.table.sorter('sorter','table',{
	headclass:'head', // Header Class //
	ascclass:'asc', // Ascending Class //
	descclass:'desc', // Descending Class //
	evenclass:'evenrow', // Even Row Class //
	oddclass:'oddrow', // Odd Row Class //
	evenselclass:'evenselected', // Even Selected Column Class //
	oddselclass:'oddselected', // Odd Selected Column Class //
	paginate:true, // Paginate? (true or false) //
	size:10, // Initial Page Size //
	colddid:'columns', // Columns Dropdown ID (optional) //
	currentid:'currentpage', // Current Page ID (optional) //
	totalid:'totalpages', // Current Page ID (optional) //
	startingrecid:'startrecord', // Starting Record ID (optional) //
	endingrecid:'endrecord', // Ending Record ID (optional) //
	totalrecid:'totalrecords', // Total Records ID (optional) //
	hoverid:'selectedrow', // Hover Row ID (optional) //
	pageddid:'pagedropdown', // Page Dropdown ID (optional) //
	navid:'tablenav', // Table Navigation ID (optional) //
	sortcolumn:1, // Index of Initial Column to Sort (optional) //
	sortdir:1, // Sort Direction (1 or -1) //
	sum:[8], // Index of Columns to Sum (optional) //
	avg:[6,7,8,9], // Index of Columns to Average (optional) //
	columns:[{index:7, format:'%', decimals:1},{index:8, format:'$', decimals:0}], // Sorted Column Settings (optional) //
	init:true // Init Now? (true or false) //
});

The first parameter taken by TINY.table.sorter is the variable name used for the object, the second is the id of the table, and the third is the settings object. You can either initialize the script in the object creation by setting init to true or you can initialize it later using sorter.init().

This script has been tested in all major browsers and is available free of charge for both personal or commercial projects under the creative commons license. Community support is available here. Paid support is also available, contact me for details.

Click here for the demo.

Click here to download the source code.

11/16/2009 – Updated script to function correctly in IE6/IE7.

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